Abstract
A general survey and the results of some medical investigations of the spa treatment made by the authors at Shirabutakayu and Shin-Shirabutakayu Spa may be summarized as follows:
A. Shirabutakayu Spa
1) A large number of spa visitors are inhabitants of Yamagata prefecture, the majority being those who are engaged in occupations other than agriculture in the city and suburbs of Yonezawa. Most of them are more than fifty years old.
2) More than half of the spa visitors come here for recreation or rest.
3) 35% of the visitors come for the express purpose of balneological therapy; of this number, each 30% are of those with neuralgia, with rheumatism and with digestive disease. About 23% of them complain of so-called “nobose” or hot fit, including high blood pressure, headache, singing in the ears, stiff shoulders, etc., for which this spa is said to have special therapeutic effect.
4) Most of the visitors stay for less than a week for balneological therapy.
5) Most of the visitors come here every year without specific direction of doctor, only 2.4% being in observance of such direction. They prefer to bathe in excess, but hardly any bathing reaction can be observed in them, only 14.8% being conscious of such reaction. It is probable a minute examination by a doctor will raise the percentage of those who are conscious of the reaction.
6) To examine the adrenal cortical function, Thorn's test was performed on newcomers before and after the 7-day spa bathing. The result shows that those in whom the adrenal cortical function proved decreased before bathing revealed a tendency to return to the normal function after bathing.
7) Successive hot-spring bathing gave a fairly high curative coefficient in experiments with rabbits artificially wounded.
B. Shin-Shirabutakayu Spa
The hot-spring bathing is effective in many cases of burn, incised wound or neuralgia. This primitive balneological treatment practised for several centuries is often more effective than medical treatment because of peculiar character of germ-free and analgetic hot-spring and of the fresh prevalent air in this retired spot.
